Monthly Archives: February 2017

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TGIT. I don’t have classes on Friday (there aren’t many at the college) so today is the end of my school week. Given my workload (2 online tests/midterms, a massive homework list for my Records Management class, and a problem set for Accounting), I’m happy to be DONE.

Women’s March huddle. Action #2 for the Women’s March was to host or attend a huddle. There wasn’t one in Mount Vernon so I signed up to host one. They’re supposed to be for 10-15 people… and we had THIRTY-FIVE tonight from all over the county and even further south. I was facilitating and thankfully didn’t have to do much because people were connecting and discussing on their own.

The actual letter. Senator Elizabeth Warren might not be able to read it at the confirmation hearing for Senator Jeff Sessions (Senator Jeff Merkley was later able to read it) but I can *TOTALLY* share it as a US citizen. 🙂 Read it here.

Melissa McCarthy on SNL. It wouldn’t be so freaking funny if it wasn’t so accurate. It honestly blows my mind that Trump’s press secretary can’t handle the press. (You’d think it would be part of the job description!)

See you in court. Trump’s immigration ban lost AGAIN. I cannot understand why he is so surprised… unless he seriously didn’t think that the judicial branch keeps the executive branch in check, just as the legislative branch checks and is kept in check by the other two branches. Sucks to be him, I guess.

Listening to Gregorian chant in a dark room. It’s been a stressy few weeks with Daniel having medication issue and being sick. I slept most of Sunday and Monday and I took some Ativan tonight to chill me out. The sounds of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles are very therapeutic.

Two

My MS Word midterm. I was going to challenge the class to see if I could avoid taking it but I’m seriously glad I chose to just take it. I’ve learned so many things about how to put together documents and make them pretty. The next time I do a NaNoWriMo challenge, I could probably make my manuscript publishable on LuLu or whatever Amazon’s self-publishing arm is.

Anyway, one of the four required projects was to create a specials sheet for a restaurant and we were told to just go in and have fun with what we were given. There’s a midterm discussion and it has been a blast to see what other people have done and why they chose to go certain directions with their project.

Three

The beauty of where I live. I cannot express in words how much I love northern Washington and the sight of evergreen trees outside my window every morning. There are also beavers, deer, and other animals that come and hang out in the area. Trees are calming and I love that it’s only a short drive to Puget Sound where I can watch the water.

Four

The word “wholeness”. It’s my word for the year. The unraveling of my marriage last year left me very fractured internally and I’m trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together. It’s definitely going to be a journey this year but a worthwhile one.

Astronaut Twin Study.This is pretty fascinating. It’s talking about the study done on astronaut twins Mark and Scott Kelly and it might help NASA figure out how to work against the negative effects of space on astronauts as we prepare to eventually send humans to Mars.

Betsy DeVos. I wrote a post on why you should ask your senators to oppose the confirmation of Betsy DeVos. Go read it. Also, pray hard for the vote which has apparently been scheduled for tomorrow at 6:30 a.m. Her being confirmed would be a bloody nightmare for the nation’s children for many reasons.

Catholic Women’s Resistance. Trump’s executive order on Friday spurred my dear friend Kassie to create the group Catholic Women’s Resistance. It’s mostly a Facebook and Twitter thing and I’m throwing it out there for those women who might be interested.

Last weekend, I received a ballot in the mail. This was a bit strange as there was no upcoming local or state election so I was interested to see what it was. Apparently, Mount Vernon schools are needing a levy to fund them and the ballot (from the county auditor’s office) was just me marking “yes” or “no”. If the levy were to pass, property taxes would go up a certain amount per person per $1000 of property value. This could be a fairly substantial tax increase for my parents (who own the house I live in) and so I was discussing it with my mom when she shared some wisdom:

Always vote “yes” on a school levy because a funding schools helps to keep an educated populace.

We all saw what an uneducated populace did last November in electing Donald Trump so I did vote “yes” on both measures!

The school levy came to mind on Tuesday when Betsy DeVos, Trump’s horrid nominee for Secretary of Education, passed committee. I have never really gotten involved with administration nominees for Cabinet posts but DeVos and some others are so completely inappropriate for their jobs that I have had no choice but to call all the senators and advocate for them not to be confirmed! DeVos is probably the worst one with Senator Jeff Sessions being a close second.

So why is DeVos so unspeakably bad that I’ve spent hours annoying various senators other than my own?

[+] She doesn’t have an education degree. That should be the bare minimum qualification for the post. You wouldn’t want a doctor who majored in fine arts and never attended medical school, would you?

[+] She has never taught in a classroom setting. Again, this should be a minimum requirement. How can she make good decisions in her post if she lacks the experience to make them???

[+] She does not understand how higher education works and how higher education funding works. I’ll let Senator Elizabeth Warren tackle this one!

[+] She does not know anything about special education or the laws governing it. This probably the most important issue to me because of Daniel. Every teacher in every education program takes a class on special education and every teacher knows the terms IDEA, 504 Plan, and IEP. DeVos does not. As to why this is such a big deal, kids who are at private schools and who are homeschooled are eligible to receive services like occupational therapy and speech therapy through their local school district free of charge! Wouldn’t it be good to have a Secretary of Education who knows this???

Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire took her to task on this one!

[+] She has worked tirelessly to take public schools apart through voucher programs and trying to move education toward the private school and for-profit education model. I’m not saying that private schools, charter schools, or choosing to homeschool your kids are a bad thing — I have friends who were homeschooled and who have chosen to homeschool their kids. I also have friends who were homeschooled, were unprepared for college as a result, and are choosing to send their kids to public schools because they recognize that they do not have the ability to teach them.

Given that the Secretary of Education is effectively the superintendent of the nation’s education system and the lion’s share of the education system is comprised of public schools, shouldn’t they at least have an interest in saving them instead of defunding them? DeVos has never set foot in a public school building and that is quite disconcerting for those of us who depend on public education for their kids.

“My family is the biggest contributor of soft money to the Republican National Committee,” she wrote in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. “I have decided to stop taking offense,” she wrote, “at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment.”

There were a couple of her financial recipients on the committee that passed on her nomination to the Senate at large. I find the idea of her buying this position to be horrifying and a sign that she doesn’t care about the education of the children of this nation — she only cares about getting political favors because she can buy them.

So please, I beg you, CALL YOUR SENATORS and tell them to oppose her confirmation. If you cannot get through to their Washington office, call their state offices. If you can’t get through by phone (a distinct possibility because a lot of people are calling in to try and get their senators to vote a certain way), fax them. Failing that, use the email form on their Senate website (http://[senator’s last name].senate.gov). Just please don’t let this unqualified woman be let loose on the nation’s schools!!!